Aquariums and Sundays

Despite it being the single most- photographed thing I've done on the trip so far, I somehow managed to completely miss mentioning the Kaiyukan in my last post. We've been going at a pace of about two tourist attractions a day, which is pretty exhausting but fun.

Kaiyukan is the name of a really big aquarium found in Osaka. It is themed around the ring of fire, and has a lot of fish in it. This is actually my second time going, and I was sad to realize that after the first time, the only photo I have of the first time is of a block of acrylic glass that's on display. I repented, and now have an enormous number of photos and videos of fish. I've included one where I'm hanging out with some jellyfish, thanks to the magic of acrylic glass.

Another highlight of Friday was eating Okonomiyaki for dinner. The traditional okonomiyaki involves putting it together yourself and cooking it at your own table. Apparently, this ideal is a little too free-form for most Japanese restaurants, so they find various ways to subvert it. In this case, the okonomiyaki was delivered to our in-table grill fully cooked, ready for sauces to be stuck on top. The grill itself was only slightly warm, and really just served as a way of keeping the food hot. This isn't really a complaint though--this stuff was amazingly delicious. I had some kind of pork/noodle/cabbage mix that was great with soy sauce, and Rachel's was a squid/onion mix that tasted good with mayonnaise.

It was a bit interesting trying to find church -- there are only a handful of wards in Osaka proper, and they don't exactly locate the buildings in the major tourist centers. After fighting with lds.org a bit, which insists on giving driving directions, we figured out a method of getting to church that involved a bit of walking. It ended up being not too bad--we did need to walk ten blocks, but these ended up being very short blocks. I'll also note that most streets in Japan are narrow -- I think I might be able to jump between sidewalks with a good running start. Maybe I'd have to get in slightly better shape first, though. The photo here was taken as we approached the church building.

Church was good, and I found I was able to follow along with the testimonies and the lessons pretty well, which is great progress. I'm still missing a lot, but at least I can follow along. Lots of members and an investigator or two kept us company, and the ward has a friendly, family-like feel, a point mentioned in a few of the testimonies. Several people expressed surprise that I hadn't served a mission in Japan, and subsequently wondered how I'd manage to learn the language; I guess that's a compliment.

While we still needed food and travel, we did our level best to only mildly crack the sabbath, and spent much of Sunday in our room or walking around the neighborhood. I've also used some of the time to update the last few blog posts with long-promised pictures; if you've already read them, you can run back through and browse. While walking around, we did run into an honest-to-goodness grocery store (something like Macey's), so we'll definitely be heading down there tomorrow to load up on candy and so forth. Bye for now!